A buncha things!

Larry Gerstein gerstein at math.ucsb.edu
Sat Jun 4 01:06:41 CEST 1994


        Hi, Folks!

        Glad to be back in touch with all of you.  I'll sling out some
comments about this month's Gladstones, having bought them now:

        (YE SPOILERS LURK AHEAD!)

        DDA 27.  I like the art and lettering, although I think that the
villainess seemed a little awkwardly drawn in some panels.  On the other
hand, as a born critic I must say that the writing had some flaws.  It
lacked the usual tongue-in-cheek Duck flavor in many cases.  Then some
aspects of the plot were a little weird.  The nephews began searching for
"suspects" after only ONE mysterious accident, the rockslide, had occurred.
 Seemed a little early to me... I would have had two or three accidents
happen before the nephews did this.  Then, why in the world was the
villainess disguising cacti as Indians?  The disguises didn't make them
look any more like human beings than they do in their natural state.  I
think she could have smuggled the cacti just as easily without the
disguises.  Who did she think she was fooling?
        The color was excellent, some of the finest I have ever seen from
Gladstone.  It was magnificent.
        John Clark has told me that Fernandez and Block have done a Duck
Christmas story for use this winter.  I'll be interested to get it.

        WDC&S 592.  "The Cluck of the Draw":  VERY NICE to see Van Horn use
Gladstone Gander (for the first time in a story he did the writing on). 
Donald wasn't treated as harshly as Van Horn sometimes does.  The only
problem with this story, I found, is that Donald stories involving a raffle
are too predictable.  Either the story ends with Donald losing one more
time, or else with him winning nothing worth having.  Now we've had Barks,
Rosa, Vicar, and Van Horn stories about this theme.  Before Daniel Branca
lifts his pen, I'll put in a vote for no more raffle stories.
        "Hoppy the Kangaroo":  The color was excellent... really gives
added strength to the story.  As a tremendous Gottfredson fan, I find the
ending of the story a bit of a cop-out -- I see where it gave Hoppy another
chance to triumph, but the story just ends very abruptly.  No indication of
what happened to Hoppy afterward.  "Bobo the Elephant," another story with
an animal in it from roughly the same time, has a much more solid ending, I
think.

        US 287.  Don, I LOVED this!  A mixture of interesting details and
broad comedy that had me just roaring with laughter.  You have claimed it
was useless to have Scrooge meet someone with square eggs other than Rhutt
Betler himself, but it added delicious spice to the story, I felt.  Just
one problem which perhaps a dialogue change could alter:  it implied that
this fellow knew that the CHICKENS were square, too.  Remember that in
"Lost in the Andes," when DD and HDL found the chickens, this was the first
time that anyone in Plain Awful had actually seen them.  Rhutt Betler had
always TOLD the Awfultonians that it was chickens who laid the eggs, but no
one had seen the birds or knew that they were square like the eggs. 
Perhaps you would like to delete the egg-buyer's comment that the chickens
are square?  Thus that angle is left to Scrooge's imagination alone, which
might make it even funnier.
        I don't like to critique Gladstone's production staff; 
particularly when they did such a fine job with color separation and color
in general here.  But I feel that the retouched gunplay on the second and
third scenes was obvious.  On the last panel of the second page, Scrooge's
beak was retraced after the gun was bent away;  but for some reason, it was
drawn at 1949 length, rather than the 1954 length you use, Don.  Scrooge
briefly looked like a different duck as a result.  Then, in the first and
second (I think) panels of the third page, the villains' hands had the guns
removed.  But they didn't redraw the whole hands. It seemed that they just
whited out the parts of the guns that weren't overlapping the villains'
hands, then colored the leftover combination of gun/hand-fragments pink. 
If Disney still holds out, when it comes time to make the album version,
that no gun be pointed at Scrooge, perhaps the hands (and that one beak)
can be made a little neater.


        Upcoming Gladstones
        ===================
        According to Diamond Previews we'll see the following Gladstone
comics in August:
        A) DD 287:  Barks' "Chickadee Challenge" (WDC 180-something, the
bridge-building story with Junior Woodchucks) and then AT strips.
        B) DM 26:  Paul Murry's "Crown of Tasbah" (from PHANTOM BLOT 5)
takes up the whole book with a VERY good Van Horn cover.  This is my
favorite Murry Blot story -- better than the others in that series. 
"Tasbah" is a 32-page story -- my guess is that the story will be chopped
up slightly.  I don't mind that, because pacing is the way I think it can
be improved.
        C) USA 29:  Part two of Scarpa's "Man from Oola-Oola," with a Rosa
cover.  (This is the conclusion of that story.)


        Boy, our mailing list hasn't had much to talk about lately!  With
Donald's 60th Birthday coming up, too!  (And in 2 weeks we get the American
60th Birthday special edition...)  It's a shame we can't have "The Wise
Little Hen" over here for DD's birthday, but that's because it was just
reprinted in 1992.  Oh, well...

        I'll be back in touch soon!

        David Gerstein
        <gerstein at math.ucsb.edu>
        "I'm de Fuller Brush Man!  I'm givin' g'way free semple!"





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